heaven and hell
by shiruru
Summary: Kuina's thoughts on how Zoro carries her soul within her sword, her relationship with him, and loving someone who is still alive after you're dead. And Zoro's thoughts on her.
1. heaven

_Note: Just my little take on what things might be like for Kuina now. I liked Kuina very, very much and would like to continue this one with other little stories about her. I hope I don't make anyone upset with this... If you have comments or questions about why I wrote this the way I did or why the feelings she has, I'd love to talk about it anytime. _

_I think Zoro is probably the deepest character in OP and I think there are a lot of possible layers and ideas to bring out in his relationships with almost everybody, but especially Kuina. Their relationship is/was important on so many different levels. This fic/series is based on the idea that the reason Zoro sleeps so much is because it's the only time he can be with her. _

_I wanted to write about it my thoughts on them in this fic... but through her. I wanted to make her a little more real. I hope I did a little bit... --Sylphiel_

* * *

  
**heaven**

* * *

  
  
So there I was, sitting on the porch, waiting for him.  
  
I'm always waiting for him. Watching him as he goes about what he does during the day, trying to experience what he experiences.   
  
Sometimes I don't understand him at all, sometimes he keeps his feelings and thoughts hidden from me. But then there are the other times. When he offers his emotions to me, to see and feel. When he sends his thoughts to me, and without the exchange of words I can know exactly what he wishes me to. Those moments, when he holds my sword close to him, and I feel as if our hearts are one at last.  
  
At last.  
  
He is a difficult person, I think, to sit back and watch. Just the way he walks makes it hard for me not to stand up and run to him. That easy swagger, part of the pretense that the only thing he really cares about is swords and sleep. His way of insisting that pain doesn't bother him, and his blind way of running right into trouble without a glance to the side. Like the stubborn boar he is.  
  
And the things he says...! Can you believe the way he talks to other people? Sometimes I wish I could just reach out and slap him. Somebody's got to. He just acts so arrogant at times. And he can be such a big jerk.  
  
But he's the one who's still alive. And I'm the one who has to sit back and watch him.  
  
Watch him do whatever it is he does when he's not sleeping. That's when he's mine.  
  
I don't know where he comes from when he does, but he arrives somehow, and then I'll see him from afar, walking slowly down the path towards the village, towards my house.   
  
Sometimes I think he stops to look around, no doubt marveling at how strange the surroundings are, the village and everything in in still there, in its place as if time had frozen that day long ago.   
  
I wonder if he thinks it lonely, the fact that the only person there is me. The village is just the way it was, except that there are no people... as if they all simply vanished into thin air, leaving behind houses and gardens and dishes on the tables.  
  
Sometimes I know he stops at the dojo, just as I often do, remembering that day. The day we became one.  
  
In my village the people believe that the soul stays with the body for seven days after death, and then the angels come to collect the soul and take it to heaven. This was, of course, what I had always expected to take place, should I die.   
  
Rather, when it did happen, I found myself standing next to my fallen body, and as people gathered outside, voices hushed, carrying my body away, I stood there, numb and not understanding what had happened.   
  
I watched them carry the dead girl away, down the street and away from me.  
  
I was still angry with my father for the things he had said to me. I hated him for a very long time, and sometimes, I still do, to be honest. He valued Zoro-- a stranger, a disrespectful little brat-- more than his own offspring, who had patiently stood by him and studiously learned everything he had to teach--   
  
simply because of a single, goddamn chromosome.   
  
It fills me with hatred even now. How can a grown man look his own child, his only child, in the face, and crush their dreams ruthlessly? I know, I know, that was just my father's way. He's the product of a different kind of upbringing than we are. Maybe he felt that that was less cruel than letting somebody else tell me. But to me, at the time, and still now, I don't believe a loving parent would do such a thing.  
  
So I went to where I knew he was. That boy I had made the promise with. The boy I had told my secret to. I found him asleep, sprawled out on his futon. The way I should have been. I passed through his window and knelt by him, unable to stop the tears from flowing down my cheeks. What had I done? What had I done to deserve this? Wasn't there any way of going back? I just wanted to be the way I was an hour ago!  
  
Everyone knows that feeling. The wish that you could just turn back one page, or rewind and do that one thing differently. You get it when you drop a dish and stare at it as it hits the floor and breaks. You get it when you survey the remains of a flood or a fire. You get it when you get some kind of terrible news that changes your life forever.   
  
Zoro had it when he heard the news in the morning. I waited by his side, watching his face contort with rage and frustration. I was by his side as he walked in the funeral procession, tears streaming in the pouring rain. I waited by his side as he sat crying in the dojo, before my father, seven days after my death.   
  
He was angry with me for dying, I knew. But I couldn't understand: why all the tears. Why was he so angry? Did we hate each other? Didn't we hate each other?  
  
It was in that moment that I realized that what I had considered hate and rivalry all along were mixed with something completely different. I sat there, staring at this boy who so easily had my father's approval, in spite of all the years and toil I had put in to get the very same for myself. And I saw something that shocked me.  
  
He was angry at my father, too. Because he... a weird, arrogant, little boy... had loved me more than my own father did. He had seen worth and potential in me that the man who had raised me, the man who had held me in his arms at birth, did not.   
  
Zoro had really believed that I could have succeeded, had I lived.  
  
Tears fell from my eyes in rivers. I reached out to touch him, to hold him, but my hands slipped without contact right through him.   
  
I wanted to be together with him.  
  
And then he said it. His voice shook with tears and anger, but he said it anyway. He asked my father for my sword. My father held the sword in his hands, not answering.  
  
At that very moment, something split the skies like lighting tearing open a sail, and I heard a sound like the brush of a million feathers rushing down from the heavens.   
  
I cried out. "Father! Father! Zoro!" I tried to shake them. My father tightened his grip on the sword, wanting to keep it.   
  
"No!" I cried, throwing myself at Zoro. "Father, let me stay with him! I want to stay with him!"  
  
The sound was coming nearer, growing louder. "Father, don't let them take me! Give him the sword! Say it!"  
  
No response.  
  
"Father!" I shrieked. "If you ever loved me, if you ever did one thing for me, PLEASE! Hear me! Let me stay with Zoro!"  
  
"Please take it," my father spoke, placing the sword in Zoro's little hands.  
  
"SAY IT!" The wings were close now, bearing down on me.  
  
"Kuina's sword... her dream..."  
  
"SAY IT!!" I felt the beating of feathers against my face.  
  
"...and soul... are now..."  
  
I ran to Zoro, wrapping myself around him. Gentle hands were reaching out for my arms, but as gentle as they were, I had found something better.  
  
"...yours." I heard my father say, and then a brilliant flash of light blinded me, and I cried out, screaming in fear, and anguish, then joy, as I realized I was safe. In Zoro's arms. In the sword.  
  
  
  
  
And that's my world. It's not really lonely, with his visits and his nearness. I'm not a ghost. I died, yes, but in a weird way I'm still alive, as part of him. I've grown along with him, his life is keeping me alive. I eat, even when I'm not really hungry, I sleep, even though sometimes I'm not truly tired, and I cook and sew and exercise and take baths and go through each day as best I can. I have to find things to keep myself busy.   
  
When the weather is nice, I like to be outside, sometimes occupied in sword drills, sometimes lying in the grass, watching as the scenes of his daily life play out across the sky. Oftentimes I sit on the porch, drinking tea and wondering.  
  
I probably spend most of my time doing that very thing. Wondering. What if?  
  
Regret? I don't know if you could call it that. Regret has to do, usually, with something you yourself have caused. Yes, I didn't have to have been polishing my sword that night. but the passage of time has made that question, that painful and angry self-reproach, fall away like dead skin, revealing a deeper understanding. I don't regret.  
  
No. I don't have a fancy word that sums it up in a few symbolic syllables. Just the simple question, What if?  
  
This is the same question I always have on my lips as I watch him. It was the question I asked when I watched him fall into the mud, tears of anger and pain trickling down his young face, and he strained to get back up to keep training, at the age of eleven. His small body was completely spent and he was coming down with a fever, as a result of having been out in the rain all night. I wanted him to go in and go to bed. He should have been in bed. But he said he couldn't. He was staying outside, getting sick because of me.   
  
It was the same question I had when I watched as he sat alone, in the fields outside the village, on a summer night when he was thirteen. The village was celebrating the summer festival, and all of the other children our age had paired off to dance, eating snacks and laughing, talking together. Playing games and having fun. Yet he sat, holding my sword in his hands, on the rock underneath the old pine tree by the lake. No one there to join him. No one there he wanted to be with.  
  
It was the same question I whispered as I watched when he had his first kiss, at age fourteen. He had chased off a gang of teenage bullies, unintentionally saving another girl in the process. I watched that adoring look on her face as she watched her rescuer, and I knew she was trouble right away. As she thanked him for his help, she leaned forward and kissed his lips quickly, before running away, leaving him stunned.  
  
It was innocent enough, just kids, I guess. But I remember how my teeth gritted, how my fists clenched in futility. How furious I was. That kiss.... should have been....  
  
What if?  
  
I'm sure he had no idea of the jealousy I had, of that one simple moment. He's not mine to be jealous of, after all! And he wouldn't even know why I felt that way. I knew if I ever tried to tell him, he wouldn't understand, being the boy he was. The cruelty of it all, that he was still alive, to experience all of his firsts, and all I could do was watch, unable to share it with him.  
  
  
It wouldn't be fair to tell him. What could he say, anyway? Thank You? Who could go on and have a happy, full life, always knowing that there was a dead person who loved you? No. I refuse to let my life thread across his in any way more painful than the way it already did. I've ruined him enough.  
  
So like I said, I know he doesn't know. And it's best that way.  
  
  
Even while I was repeating that thought to myself for the millionth time, suddenly I spotted him on the path, coming towards the house. I felt a surge of excitement at the sight of him. I felt the impulse to run to meet him, to jump up and down, waving my arms to catch his attention. To have him notice me.  
  
"Zoro!" I called out happily, feeling a tear come to my eye.  
  
Something in my mind laughed at me, mocking me for contradiciting the thoughts I had just been thinking. (It's best that way, huh?)  
  
I swallowed back the thought and commanded that voice to be silent, and simply watched him as he approached.   
  
Here he comes. My heaven.  
  
  
  
Owari... 


	2. hell

  
** hell**

* * *

  
  
It would drive anyone crazy. I know.  
  
Everyone... has one person who is perfect for them, right? Somewhere in the world?   
  
What if you found them? What if you were lucky enough to find them while you were still very young? You may not have known it at the time, sure, but as time went on you would grow together. Over time, day after day spent together, sharing, then you come to the slow realization...  
  
This person is the one for me.   
  
And I want to be together with them forever.  
  
Sounds nice, right? Everyone's dream. To love someone. To be loved by someone.  
  
Well guess what. She's dead.   
  
Before I even realized who she was for me. Before I even had a chance to enjoy it, even. My destiny was snatched away from me, and I didn't even have the chance to truly be angry about it.  
  
Unfair? That doesn't even begin to describe it. Unjust? No, not that either.  
  
Because you see, it gets so much worse.  
  
She was about the same age as me. We were both at that awkward stage, something between a child and a teenager. That age in which the girls seem to generally be a few inches above the boys, and the boys tease them endlessly about their changes, maybe because the boys are slower and won't do the same for another year or two. Who knows why. It was that age, and she was feeling it and thinking about it. Uncomfortable as she noticed the increasing gap between herself and the others... the boys at the dojo.  
  
I met her when I was looking for a fight, and she spanked me good. No seriously, she kicked my ass. I was whupped. And I was shocked. I had thought this whole sword thing looked so easy. Everyone's played stickball, or swung a broomstick before. It feels so natural.  
  
So how was it so easy for her?  
  
And I remember yelling... after she defeated me two thousand times... the word that was going to haunt me for the rest of my life...  
  
"Kuyashii!"  
  
It generally refers to frustration, humiliation, often at one's own inability. Mortification, the feeling of wanting to die rather than face reality. Kuyashii.  
  
Kurushii. So similar. Crushing. Often used when someone finds themselves restrained against their will or has difficulty breathing.   
  
Like my whole life.   
  
The strangling, crushing feeling of wishing something wasn't the way it was, but having to live with it. Being crammed into a mold that you don't want to fit into. Wanting to fight back and being unable to. Not wanting things to happen the way they are. Bitter, angry, painful, smothering. Kuyashii. Kurushii.  
  
You'd think it's easy, living with just one goal? I mean, how many times have I said it, really? The greatest swordsman in the world. That's all, that's it. Nothing else.  
  
Yeah freakin' right. You wanna know what the biggest lie of my life is? That one. Because that's not a lie I tell for other people... hell, they could care less. That's a lie I tell myself. Every day. And it's gotten so bad I gotta hide from it now. Ignore it, every chance I get.  
  
Think I sleep 'cause I'm tired? What a joke.  
  
And the worst part is... I can't escape it. I can't escape my self, I can't escape her. Not even in sleep. Because sleep... sleep is the one place I can be with her. And that, my friends, is the source of all my torment.  
  
I carry her soul with me. The girl I mentioned before. The One. When she died, her father gave her to me. He gave me her sword and for some unknown reason, said, that her sword, her dream, and her _soul_ were now mine.  
  
What possessed him to say that, I'll never know. But he set it in motion. The sweetest gift and the most bitter pain I could imagine. She's mine. But I can't have her.  
  
Imagine having a rose encased in a snowglobe. The most beautiful rose you've ever seen. And you could carry it around, and watch her... I mean it, bloom, and become more beautiful every day, but you can't touch it. You can't breathe in its fragrance. You can never truly have it.   
  
Or how about the world's most beautiful butterfly, caught and pinned to a board. You can hang it on the wall and admire it. But it's still dead.  
  
It's sort of like that. Well, maybe not. I don't exactly have a way with words, so if you don't like it... tough. What I mean is...  
  
Kuina has been with me, her soul held in her sword. And I've been carrying her with me since that day. I see her when I sleep sometimes. Sometimes I know she's listening to me when I talk. I feel her eyes on me during the day. Like she's always looking over my shoulder. And we, us two, are together.  
  
She's my best friend, but in so much more of a deep way than other kids are best friends. She knows me. She watches over me.  
  
I've always been a loner. I'm not exactly good at making friends. And it was the same, of course, with her. I hated her at first! She was the bane of my existence for that short time. But then there was that night... that night she was crying. And I yelled at her. And I made her promise, that we would both try.  
  
And since then I've had one person... one person who I felt like knew me.  
  
So we're together, and even when nobody else does, I know she understands. I have her with me. I can go and visit her if I want, and spend time with her. It's relaxing to feel known. You know the feeling. You're in a room full of strangers, or you're away from home, and then when you see that one familiar person, all the tension goes out of your shoulders and you are reminded that you are you. And that's all you are.  
  
If it were just that, just being able to sit and chitchat with a ghost, that would be clean and simple. But there's more. Because by some cruel twist of fate, she didn't stay the same little girl that she was when she died. Somehow my life is feeding hers. And she has grown along with me. So instead of staying a memory, a dead little girl with messy hair and tomboy clothes, she's...  
  
Remember what I said about that flower?   
  
She's bloomed. She's a young woman now. Her body is not the body of a kid anymore. Her face... her skin... her hair... everything. She's like a painting. She's absolutely perfect. I mean, anything I could have asked for in a woman, things I knew and things I didn't know about, she has. If you could only see her! Her hands are like silk, and her skin... oh, god. Breathtaking.  
  
And here's where it gets ugly.  
  
Because...  
  
I want her.  
  
How can I? This is my childhood friend! She's part of me, right? I knew her as a kid. She's been dead for about a decade now. I've gone on and matured (some) and had experiences and such, and she...   
  
She is like the princess in the ivory tower. She may appear to be my equal... but you see, she hasn't had any of those moments... she's so innocent. She's never felt the feelings that she would have had if she had gone through those horrible years... thirteen, sixteen, eighteen. I'm sure you remember what you were like and what you were doing at that time.   
  
And her soul is as pure as it was at the beginning.  
  
Which only makes me hunger for her more. My soul is stained with blood, and I want something clean and pure. It has to be her. I know that she can take it away. I want her to take it away.  
  
It's been slowly building, deep inside me, for years. Like water seeping, gathering to burst a flood wall. At first it was just curiousity. She was such a strange creature, so different from me. Her awkwardness was compelling-- the way you see a baby chicken starting to grow feathers, and you want to pick it up and keep it warm until it can do so for itself. I could tell, even back then, that she felt self-conscious. And I wondered why. I wanted to know what she was thinking, why she got nervous. I wanted to understand how she thought she was different.  
  
Then it became a strange fondness. I found I _liked_ to look at her. Why? Hell if I knew. I just knew that looking at her made me feel... different. Especially when we sparred. My eyes caught the fluid grace of her movements. The strong muscles of her arms covered with feminine softness. The way her eyes flashed as she teased me, taunted me. Her small, delicate hands, wrapped around the handle of her wooden sword, gripping it tightly...  
  
There I go again.  
  
Swordfighting is, in actuality, very different from what most people think it is. Two opponents hacking at each other? Not quite. It's more of... a testing. Testing your adversary's will and strength. Feeling out their moves and impulses. Knowing their mind and following them along. Blocking, pushing, pressing, thrusting... tasting...  
  
I can't. I can't practice with her anymore. The urge is too hard to suppress, the pain is too great. I could never hurt her, my angel. Never. But my body... my body wants to follow through and finish the duel. Finish it with a brutal finality. To take her, possess her, make her mine. Forever.  
  
But when she teases me, taunts me with her little snapping comments, just the way she always has, she snaps another thread holding me back. Because she seems so smug in her safety. She doesn't know. And some evil part of me wants to show her just how dangerous it is to play around with me. And I hate myself all over again.  
  
Some people are those who push ahead and take action, like to lead. Not me. My style is more like reacting. I tend to sit back and judge the situation and the opponent and then react. I see other guys chasing after money or girls, but not me. I let things chase me. If they catch up, fine. But I run hard. I run as hard and as fast as I can to avoid having to deal. And I've tried to run from this. But when I close my eyes, there she is again.  
  
I've never asked anyone for anything. Even when people offer me things, I can't accept them. I handle my needs alone. But this is one need I cannot ignore.  
  
It makes me sick to the pit of my stomach. The need, and then the shame at the mere having of that need, sickens me. I hate it. I wish I could cut it away and cast it aside. But it permeates my whole being and I can't get rid of it. No matter how hard I try. No matter how many times I try to scrub it away. No matter how many fights I get into, no matter how many times I let myself get cut.  
  
Yet at the end of the day or when I black out after the battle, she is always there, waiting for me. Eager to see me. She's my friend. Accepting and warm. That may only be because I'm all she has, but when I come around the corner and see that face looking up at me, it's hard to remember that. I try, I remind myself over and over that it's nothing special. But a little part of me can't help imagining...  
  
Imagining what it could have been like, if she were mine.  
  
But I cannot, I will not, spoil the purity of the one untainted thing I have. It would be like tearing the petals from a perfect white rose. After all was said and done, I could never forgive myself.  
  
No. She will remain, safe and untouched, in her little snowglobe world. I will admire her from a distance until it drives me mad. And when I reach my goal, death will free me from my desire and my pain.  
  
Kurushii. Holding back.  
  
Kuyashii. Denying myself.  
  
But she will stay happy.   
  
My angel.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
